Bridging the Gap between the National Library and Researchers

This poster describes the KB Researcher-in-residence programme, the first three pilot placements of 2014 and our lessons learned

Open a GLAM lab

Defining a GLAM Lab: A Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Lab is a place for experimenting with digital collections and data. It is where researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, educators and the interested public can collaborate with an engaged group of partners to create new collections, tools, and services that will help transform the future ways in which knowledge and culture are disseminated. The exchanges and experimentation in a Lab are open, iterative and shared widely. This book describes why and how to open a GLAM Lab and encourages participation in a movement that can transform organisations and the communities they partner with. Building a GLAM Lab: Building a GLAM Lab involves defining its core values to guide future work, fostering a culture that is open, transparent, generous, collaborative, creative, inclusive, bold, ethical, accessible and encourages a mindset of exploration. The Lab should be grounded in user-centred and participatory design processes and its staff should be able to clearly communicate what the Lab is about. It's important to think big but start small and establish quick wins to get up and running. GLAM Lab teams: There are recommendations for the qualities and skills to look for in Labs teams, how to go about finding allies within and outside the institution, and ideas on how to create a nurturing environment for teams to thrive in. Labs teams have no optimal size or composition, and its team members can come from all walks of life. Teams need a healthy culture to ensure a well-functioning Lab which might be augmented intermittently by fellows, interns or researchers-inresidence. For a Lab to have lasting impact it must be integrated into the parent organisation and have the support of staff at all levels. User communities: GLAM Labs will need to engage and connect with potential users and partners. This means rethinking these relationships to help establish clear and targeted messages for specific communities. In turn, this enables Labs to adjust their tools, services and collections to establish deeper partnerships based on co-creation, and open and equal dialogue. Rethinking collections and Data: The book discusses the digital collections which are an integral part of Labs. It provides insights on how to share the collections as data, and how to identify, assess, describe, access, and reuse the collections. In addition, there is information about messy and curated data, digitisation, metadata, rights and preservation. Transformation: Experimentation is the critical core of the Lab's process. Insights about how to transform tools into operational services are demonstrated. It shows that experimentation can prepare the organisational culture and services for transformation. There is an examination of funding and the advantages and disadvantages of various models through discussion of the different mechanisms and options that an organisation can apply to Lab set-ups. Funding and Sustainability: We share insights on how to plan for a Lab's sustainability as well as a step-by-step guide for when an organisation is retiring or decommissioning a Lab. Labs have a pivotal role in the transformation of GLAMs and the book highlights the critical importance of Labs in changing the future of digital cultural heritage.Funded by UCL Qatar (Mmember of Qatar Foundation) and Qatar University Library. There has also been support from the British Library Labs, and the Library of Congress Labs

Digital Humanities in European Research Libraries:Beyond Offering Digital Collections

Libraries are increasingly becoming involved in digital humanities research beyond the offering of digital collections. This article examines how libraries in Europe deal with this shift in activities and how they compare with libraries in other parts of the world. This article builds on the results of surveys conducted in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United States and the United Kingdom, and compares them with a survey conducted in Europe. We found that European libraries are mostly active in research supporting activities, such as digitisation and storage, while US libraries often include analysis in their activities. Funding comes from the library’s main budget and non-structural funding in a variety of forms. Staff working in DH roles has a diverse range of titles, with various forms of librarians being the most used. Analytical staff such as GIS specialists are only found in the US survey. All surveyed libraries agree that the biggest skill gap amongst their staff is in technical skills. When looking towards the future, European libraries see the role of digital humanities (or digital scholarship) within the library grow and are making plans to facilitate this change within their organisation by positioning themselves as an attractive research partner, by opening and increasing their digital collections and by improving the internal workings of the library

KB Lab: Exploring the National Library of the Netherlands' digital treasure trove

Presentation for the workshop Digital approaches towards serial publications (18th–20th centuries) on 11-12 September 2017 in Brussels, Belgium, organised by Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities

"Where do you need us?" — The National Library in the Digital Humanities

In the past two decades or so, national libraries have been digitising millions of pages of books, newspapers, magazines and other text based collections. In this digital age, the research landscape is changing rapidly, with scholars able to ask new types of questions and answer them in novel ways by working with a wide variety of materials and in new collaborative modes. As a national library, the British Library (BL) holds over 150 million items dating as far back as 2000 BC and is responding to this climate by realigning its services and structure, including the creation of a new digital scholarship department, but there are still fundamental changes the Library needs to make in order to allow researchers to fully exploit digital resources. We are passionate about working with researchers and scholars so that they can use our digital collection to create new knowledge. The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) has planned to have digitised and OCRed its entire collection of books, periodicals and newspapers from 1470 onwards by the year 2030. But already in 2013, 10% of this enormous task will be completed, resulting in 73 million digitised pages, either from the KB itself or via public-private partnerships as Google Books and ProQuest. Many are already available via various websites (e.g. kranten.kb.nl, statengeneraaldigitaal.nl, anp.kb.nl, earlydutchbooksonline.nl) and we are working on a single entry point to (re)search all sets simultaneously. Of course, as an institution that serves the community, these (vast) digitisation projects are not done for ourselves and we make everything we digitise publicly available. Unfortunately, as a library that is not connected to a university — with researchers of their own — a place for us in the Digital Humanities landscape is not as naturally formed as that of a university library. But we do have interesting material and want to get our data out there and have it used by researchers, the general public or anyone who is interested in large corpora of text. But how can we best achieve this? What does the Digital Humanities community need from us? What do we have to do be as institutions to serve researchers who want to get their hands dirty with this data? How would you like to access this data? Would you prefer a lab with support from material experts and programmers? Would you rather have quantity over quality? Which formats should we offer? This poster will present the KB as the National Library of the Netherlands, and the collections we(currently)have, but also our efforts to make our data available as complete sets by setting up a Data Services team that focuses on the questions raised by these new activities. This poster will also present the British Library, the data and services it provides and the BL Labs project which is designed to achieve the transformational steps that will change the way the Library provides access to its digital collections and enable scholars to research entire collections rather than just individual items. We hope to stir up a discussion with the digital humanists at DH2013 to ascertain whether our work is going into the right direction, and what researchers need and expect from us as national libraries. How can we help you

Digital Scholarship at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek

The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) is an active partner in national and international cooperative efforts to develop new knowledge and technology. With this poster, we wish to showcase what the KB can offer researchers in the field of Digital Humanities. We will present our digitised data sets, current research projects and the services of the KB Research Lab that was launched at DHBenelux 2014. The KB has planned to have digitised and OCRed its entire collection of books, periodicals and newspapers from 1470 onward by the year 2030. Already in 2013, 10% of this enormous task was completed, resulting in 73 million digitised pages, either from the KB itself or via public-private partnerships as Google Books and ProQuest. Over 1 million books, newspapers and magazines are currently available via the search portal www.delpher.nl. Next to this, most of these data sets are freely available for research purposes and we welcome and encourage experiments and new applications. The virtual KB Research Lab shows some of such applications and invites researchers to experiment with our data, new technologies and innovative prototypes. The KB also collaborates with researchers in research projects or (junior) fellowships to learn from their research in order to improve the services we provide for Digital Humanists. This poster will present the various data sets that the KB has available for research, the activities we undertake to work together with scholars in research projects and the services that we offer those who wish to work with our material

LIBER Webinar: Setting Up A GLAM Workbench In Your Library

You’ve shared your digital collection data, but now what? How can you introduce people to the possibilities for research or creativity? How can you help them develop the digital skills to make use of your data? This webinar, organised by LIBER’s Digital Humanities Working Group, will demonstrate how you can use Jupyter notebooks to develop your own digital collection workbench – sharing tools, tricks, and tutorials that scaffold exploration and reuse. Drawing on the experience of developing the GLAM Workbench, this webinar will show you how Jupyter notebooks can be used to create a variety of resources, from web-based tools to detailed tutorials. Using online services such as Binder, these notebooks can be run live online, allowing users to play with code in a safe and structured environment. In this way, the GLAM Workbench aims to overcome gaps in skills, confidence, and experience that can prevent researchers from taking advantage of the growing volume of GLAM data now becoming available. This webinar will help you: Understand how Jupyter notebooks can be used to support the use of digital collection data. Learn how to create and share Jupyter notebooks, making use of free services such as GitHub, NBViewer and Binder. Explore ways of supporting users with a variety of skill levels, from experienced coders to the digitally curious. Don’t just share collection data, help your users understand its possibilities. About the speaker Tim Sherratt is a historian and hacker who researches the possibilities and politics of digital cultural collections. Tim has worked across the cultural heritage sector and has been developing online resources relating to libraries, archives, museums and history since 1993. His creations include useful things like the GLAM Workbench, strange things like the Vintage Face Depot, and important things like The Real Face of White Australia. You can find him at timsherratt.org or as @wragge on Twitter

LIBER Digital humanities and digital cultural heritage working group: a case study of international collaboration and network building

How can European library staff working in digital humanities connect with peers in the library sector, determine where to find relevant information about digital scholarship, provide their collections as data and to be an equal partner in digital humanities research? The LIBER Digital Humanities Working Group was created as a participatory knowledge network in 2017 to address these questions. Through a series of workshops, knowledge sharing activities, and a Europe-wide survey and resulting report, the Working Group engaged with the international LIBER DH community. Useful reflections are provided on organising an open, voluntary DH community and planning for inclusive activities that benefit digital scholarship in European research libraries

Evaluation & automated correction of historical newspaper OCR using Deep Learning

<p>This poster was presented at the National eScience Symposium and describes the research project the KB is undertaking with the eScience Center on the evaluation and correction of historical newspaper OCR using deep learning.</p

Digital Humanities in European Research Libraries - a Survey

Abstract and poster of paper 0185 presented at the Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (DH2019), Utrecht , the Netherlands 9-12 July, 2019